“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about.” ~ Dschalāl ad-Dīn ar-Rūmī Autumn (2017) – I feel honored to be the featured artist for Esoteric Quarterly, an independent, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to […]

“Books are the gardens of scholars.” ~ Ali ibn Talib (as)It is Autumn, 2017. This past summer I exhibited some art work in a garden in Berlin and took part in art festivals and studied the culture and history of the Islamic garden. The Berlin garden was pretty yet chaotic (so Berlin!) and I longed […]

Notes on Modern Digital Art & Neen from the Unorthodox

“(S)he is the (wo)man who, having found Allah’s Self-disclosure in each and every indivisible moment, worships and surrenders to the One Who IS the moment.” ~ Sufi Wisdom, after Ali El-Senossi “Neen, which by coincidence in old Greek means “exactly now, not a second later” was a controversial name (in a moment in art history, […]

“O Marvel! A garden amidst the flames.” ~Ibn Arabi, Tarjuman al-Ashwaq “We are unaware of our own manifestation in this garden, the narcissus does not see it’s own spring with it’s own eyes.” ~ Mir Dard When do we really see and take in the delicate beauty of a flower, the majesty and care of […]

“The word “Toxin” (…) has a Persian Shamanic root (“taxsa” means “poisoned arrow”). The art and science of “the anti-dote against the poison” has a highly honored, special place in the Islamic healing arts.“ The Christmas Rose (Helleborus niger, Black hellebore or Snow Flower, in Asia: Helleborus orientalis) is an evergreen perennial flowering plant that […]

“The Arabesque (…) transfigures the object of nature it decorates (…) into a weightless, transparent, floating pattern extending infinitely in all directions (…) the object of nature has become under the Arabesque treatment a window onto the infinite.” During my work on this blog, while researching, reading and writing about Islamic philosophy and arts I have come […]

“Once the Mint takes roots it won’t leave easily and does it’s cleansing job.” I know the modest Mint in the kitchen and as an aid for indegistation. On further investigation Mint reveals itself as a powerful herb that draws out dark, moist and unpure things from the body. In nature Mint grows in the […]

The Peonie in European medieval art and folklore – inspired by Islamic gardening culture and intriguing mystical stories – also speaks about the burning desire for God. Yet other tales are more ambigous. During the night the Peonie spends medicine and healing, during the day the beautiful “Rose with no thorns” is protected by a jealous bird.

“O God of all gods, come to the aid of the people of Light, give the victory to the people of Light, and guide the light unto the Light!” ~ Shihābuddīn Yaḥyā Sohravardī (a.s) After a short illness Armin Medosch, an Austrian net artist and activist has died on the 23rd of February 2017. I […]

“The symbol you see in the logo of this blog is the graphic symbol of the Greatest Name of God (ism allah al-a’zam), also known as the Seal of Solomon (khitam sulayman): a symbol which from quite early on plays a major part in the history of Islamic esotericism, especially in magic and the occult (…) […]